in vile raiment, but looking like a queen,
and the king cried, 'Go forward, woman: look at that beggar man; dost
thou know thy son?' She walked on, her head high, and Perseus whispered,
'Mother, stand thou beside me, and speak no word!'

'My mother knows me not, or despises me,' said Perseus, 'yet, poor as I
am, I do not come empty-handed. In my wallet is a gift, brought from
very far away, for my lord the king.'

He swung his wallet round in front of him; he took off the covering of
goat-skin, and he held the Gorgon's head on high, by the hair, facing
the king and the chiefs. In one moment they were all grey stones, all
along the hall, and the chairs whereon they sat crashed under the weight
of them, and they rolled on the hard clay floor. Perseus wrapped the
head in the goat-skin, and shut it in the wallet carefully, and cried,
'Mother, look round, and see thy son and thine own revenge.'

Then Danae knew her son, by the sound of his voice, if not by her
eyesight, and she wept for joy. So they two went to the house of Dictys,
and Perseus was cleansed, and clad in rich raiment, and Danae, too, was
apparelled like a free woman, and embraced Andromeda with great joy.

Perseus made the good Dictys king of Seriphos; and he placed the winged
shoes in the temple of Hermes, with the sword Herpe, and the Gorgon's
head, in its goat-skin cover; but the polished shield he laid on the
altar in the temple of Athene. Then he bade all who served in the
temples come forth, both young and old, and he locked the doors, and he
and Dictys watched all night, with the armed Cretans, the crew of his
ship, that none might enter. Next day Perseus alone went into the temple
of Athene. It was as it had been, but the Gorgon's head and the
polished shield were gone, and the winged shoon and the sword Herpe had
vanished from the temple of Hermes.

With Danae and Andromeda Perseus sailed to Greece, where he learned that
the sons of King Proetus had driven King Acrisius out of Argos, and that
he had fled to Phthia in the north, where the ancestor of the great
Achilles was king. Thither Perseus went, to see his grandfather, and he
found the young men holding games and sports in front of the palace.
Perseus thought that his grandfather might love him better if he showed
his strength in the games, which were open to strangers, so he entered
and won the race, and the prize for leaping, and then came the throwing
of the disc of bronze. Perseus threw a